Back in 2008, when the album Furr by Blitzen Trapper was released, I heard Black River Killer for the first time. 2008 was a big year of music for me, where I immersed myself in as much indie and folk music as every day allowed, listening at work, on the tube and at home. I was living in London at the time.
In 2009 at the End of the Road festival, I saw Blitzen Trapper perform songs from Furr and their upcoming album Destroyer of the Void, but with so much music and so little time, I didn’t think much about the band until I met Mr F, who knew of the song ‘Black River Killer’ from the video clip. At the time he was recording hours of rage, an all night music video program run by the TV network ABC on Friday and Saturday nights. He would listen to the recorded programs and cut up and keep the best songs. We still have this little archive today. While I was listening to my albums on streaming services, I hadn’t seen the music video until recently. Which reminded me to write about this song, because even though it’s a murder ballad and might seem grim, it is a well written song, catchy song which even 18 years later has not lost any of its appeal.
We begin with an upbeat acoustic and Eric Earley’s vocal, a fresh modern take on a country singer from the olden days. The picture painted is stark but it leaves us with no questions about what kind of song this is:
It was just a little while past the Sunset Strip
They found the girl’s body in an open pit
Her mouth was sewn shut, but her eyes were still wide
Gazin’ through the fog to the other side
They booked me on a whim and threw me deep in jail
With no bail, sitting silent on a rusty pail
Just gazin’ at the marks on the opposite wall
Rememberin’ the music of my lover’s call, yeah
At this point in the song, I’m not sure if we are meant to know that the protagonist has committed the crime, or if he’s the innocent bystander to a gruesome murder.
After the first verse, there’s a musical interlude with the slightly spooky keyboard riff, a hook which repeats throughout. The mixing has this ethereal feeling and it floats over the other instruments.
The bridge uses the same 5 chords as the verse and sets up the idea of redemption “I know just what it takes to pull a man’s soul back from heaven’s gate”. This feels like it’s trying to put us off the scent of the real story, when you know how it unfolds. There’s the addition of a shaker and a bit more bass to build towards the chorus.
The chorus melody is super catchy with the repetition of “Oh when” and the addition of backing vocals which help give the new melody a lift. The lyrics following on from the bridge, ask a question about being saved before it’s too late and the keys to the kingdom being a biblical reference. Thinking about the song as a whole, there’s an inference that God can’t save our protagonist. A tambourine makes an appearance during the instrumental section.
The instrumentation doesn’t change much for the second verse, but the backing vocals are in for the second half and the bridge and the shaker continues to give some texture. The vocal melody varies here to add some interest with the line “So I stole me a horse and I rode it around”. Fun fact, this is depicted by a motorcycle being ridden in the video clip.
By the third verse, our protagonist is still repeating the same mistakes after being let go a second time: “You know the devil works fast you know it don’t take long”. He visits the watering hole ‘Black River’ which lends its name to the song. The contrast of being “washed as clean as a newborn babe” with the “Black River water it’s as black as sin” is great imagery. There is no amount of water that can wash this man clean and no one is coming to save him. The backing vocal pivots to an ‘ooh’ here much like the chorus which adds this spooky vibe. The tambourine also comes in again.
The final chorus is extended, with the addition of the line ‘Will this Black River water wash me clean again’, where the keyboard hook comes in and fades out. There’s the usual backing vocal on the chorus melody, layered with the ‘oohs’. I like using backing vocals as another instrument and I think for this song, trying to add another instrument in here to give some dynamics would have muddied the waters. It’s the simplicity and small adjustments that make this song work. I think that’s why I still love this song and why I’ll never not sing to it when it comes on.